What are the most important top troubleshooting tools and testers for the Maintenance Department and Service?

When it comes to CNC and machine maintenance your main goal is to eliminate costly mistakes up front by your service department. Whether experienced or inexperienced these tools can only help your bottom line.

First what are the costly mistakes?

• Incorrect diagnosis of a problem, causing additional problems by troubleshooting.
• Excessive downtime
• Costs for parts ordering the wrong item/restocking fees
• Production loss
• Potential customer loss
• Scrap parts produced

Recommended top Maintenance tools

Standard high quality meter- This is an obvious tool for your toolbox and the most important one. Buy a Quality ohm meter, typically around $300-$400. If you do not you will pay for it later and get misreading which you will not know until someone with a high quality meter checks it after you.

Megohm meter for testing servo motors/motors and cables. It tests the resistance to ground and is used to determine if motor, plug, or cables are bad, coolant impregnated or beginning to fail. This is a type of meter that measures resistance in Megohms typically above 1000 megohms or 1,000,000,000 ohms. The average ohm meter can have a maximum range of anywhere from 1meg to 30megohms.

Phase Rotation meter- This meter is handy when a company moves machines around or adds machines to facility. I can not tell you how many service calls are generated because a company hooks the phasing up wrong. Many of you think I just watch for rotation. Hydraulic pump, etc. Sometimes that may work sometimes it does not. Just because the drives come up and the axis moves the right direction does not mean that it’s phased right! Coolant pumps, hydraulic pumps, cooler pumps can all be damaged when phase is wrong and more.

Fused Jumper for testing machine Inputs and output devices- This is a must have and has saved my reputation as a service engineer many times over. This is simply a 1amp fuse inline with two meter probes and a bunch of different attachments.

Proximity switch tester
This is another must have in the toolbox. With this unit you can test proximity switches as well as tell what type of Proxy switch it is NPN or PNP. This allows both testing of the Prox as well as determination of what may be compatible in your stock to get you up and running ASAP. This is also handy for determining how to wire it if you do not have prints or the tag is gone off of the switch.

Drawbar clamp force dynamometer clamprite
Definitely not a cheap tool. But one every maintenance department should have. This eliminates unnecessary waste of troubleshooting time and saves costs of emergency downtime and costs replacing spindles. Check pricing - Spindle clamp Foce check tester

Quality soldering iron
A quality soldering iron is crucial. Until you actually pay for a good temperature controlled soldering iron and use it on amphenol plugs and honda connectors you will not know what you are missing. If you are constantly frustrated when soldering because you can't get it hot enough, melting insulation or the iron is to big then its time for an upgrade.

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